Digital Marketing – Leveraging Siri For Your Business

Many digital marketing professionals have tested Siri, the voice recognition application of Apple’s new iPhone 4S, and found it to be useful for online marketing. Previous smartphone-based voice recognition softwares, like Google’s iPhone app, only displayed static search results pages. On the contrary, Siri is dynamic and allows users to place calls simply by tapping on a search result. It also allows users to get directions to a searched location, without having to switch apps. According to various digital marketing experts, this simplicity of use will lead many people to adopt Siri and the iPhone 4S, in the future.

Small and medium-sized businesses can also leverage Siri for digital marketing purposes. It all begins with the basics. The key to being found and clicked upon in local search is to have correct business listings. Hence, digital marketing professionals should ensure that their business listing is accurate, optimised and consistent over various websites. Apple is currently using Google Maps to get details about local businesses as well as driving instructions, so ensure that your digital marketing listing on Google Maps is complete and up-to-date.

Another thing that digital marketing experts have discovered while experimenting with numerous voice-related searches on Siri, is how certain key phrases within a particular category are displayed. For example, if one searches for ‘lunch near me’, Siri checks for the word ‘lunch’ in reviews of local restaurants. It then displays a list of nearby restaurants with their ratings, and the approximate distance to each restaurant. On moving down this list, one will be able to view a legend that mentions that reviews have been collected from Yelp.

This means that digital marketing professionals should evaluate their reviews on Yelp, and optimise it to ensure that certain key phrases are located in the text. This does not mean that marketers should stuff their reviews with digital marketing keywords. Instead, what it does mean is asking customers to be more specific about your company, products or services, while writing an online review.

When the smartphone was launched, local search grew exponentially. Why? Mainly because smartphones made the process of running online searches easier than other phones. With Apple’s Siri, local search has become even more straightforward. If history is anything to go by, the launch of Siri will spawn growth in consumer local search. Hence, check your marketing fundamentals, and ensure that your company can be found through this highly profitable category.